Paul Brodie, Reincarnation and the Unfinished Business of the Excelsior Motorcycles

Our conversation with Paul Brodie takes a surprising turn as he describes his belief that he is the reincarnation of Bob Perry, an Excelsior motorcycle rider from the 1920s...

WNW [0:36:25]: As you say in your book—there's nothing that I'm putting in this interview that isn't covered in your book—you also have a spiritual side. You actually go so far as to say that you believe that you're the reincarnation of a…board track motorcycle racer by the name of Bob Perry from the 1920s. Can you tell us a little bit about the racer and how you came to believe you were him in another life.

PB: OK, Bob Perry he was engineer and a racer for Excelsior and the owner of the company was Ignaz Schwinn. He made a fortune making bicycles…

WNW: …the Schwinn bike which everybody knows…

PB: …the Schwinn bike and he bought the Excelsior company as the underdogs in 1913, I believe, and then Bob came on board. Each of them lost their fathers at a really early age and so they really had…a kind of a bond, that's my understanding of it. So when Bob lost his life at that early race in January of 1920, Ignaz Schwinn, he was devastated.

WNW: Like he had lost his son. Or brother.

PB: Yes. So rumour goes that he ordered all the bikes smashed and buried. That could have happened but I think there was a couple which were raced later on but there was no factory support so nothing ever happened really race-worthy.

WNW: So this just fed into the legend of the Excelsior.

PB: Oh yeah, the smashing of the bikes, the burying, you know…

WNW: Right.

PB: …a destruction.

WNW: Right.

PB: So I've been going to readings my whole life basically—my mum got me into that—because she was always into the spiritual side so I've always, at some point, I go have a reading see what's going on. Sometimes good readings, sometimes bad readings…

WNW: This is reading as as we would commonly understand it? You go to a psychic and they would tell you the future?

PB: No, it's not the future so much. It's about your life situation as it is, why things are happening, possible outcomes. It's nothing like, you know, if you go buy a lottery ticket you're going to win big or things like that.

The woman I was seeing at the time, she would go into a trance and the guides would speak through her. Her voice would visibly alter when she started speaking. She would go quiet, she would sit still and then a few moments later she would say “greetings!” But her voice was different because they're using her body to speak through. So I really felt like I had a connection with the other side. I know a lot of people don't understand this, or whatever, but I was raised this way and she was really good at this. She's passed away now so I’ve kind of lost that.

I knew that there was something that I didn't know about the Excelsiors. So I went to see her to try an understand what I was missing. My intuition was telling me—I’ve always used my intuition a lot—so I've worked on my intuition over the years. And we haven't even sat down and she says “my God, you were Bob Perry!” That was a total shock to me I just…

WNW: Had you set her up at all? Did she know that name prior to the reading?

PB: Don't think so, no.

WNW: So, she just managed to produce this spontaneously?

PB: Yes. She said “my God, that's what they're telling me right now!” So it made sense because in that life, it was cut short and the bike never reached its full potential because Ignaz Schwinn had cut the racing department. There was no more funding, no more race department. I guess for me, in that last life, it was unfinished business.

I know that I see the world a little differently from other people. I believe that we all have many lives and when we're on the other side, we decide what we want to do, who we want to associate with, who our contacts will be, what we'll do in a sense. I know there is some give and take. It's not just you come down here and there's no change at all. Things change. But the basic idea of what you come down for…there’s a certain purpose often. So I think one of the big things that I’ve come down to do is to build this race bike and to finish it off in a sense.

WNW: The economics are really secondary. This is something that you are almost feel like you were born to do.

PB: Oh yes, oh yes. Which, for a lot of people they probably just don't understand that. When I was writing the book I was really, really hesitant to add that into the book because I had no idea what people's reaction would be. Of all the people that read the book, virtually without exception, no one even mentions that. They say “good book, I enjoyed it very much.”

Now, there was only one person who ever said anything to me about that and he told me that he found out that in his last life which was in 1930s, he was in England, he was a pilot and they were testing experimental planes and he crashed and he lost his life. So it was really interesting that the only person who has ever really said anything to me about having another life is someone who also found that out about his past life.

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Listen to this excerpt with the player above, or listen to the entire interview. We welcome your comments below. Also, ratings and reviews on iTunes or Facebook are invaluable and very much appreciated. Thank you! (header photo: The Excelsior motorcycle racing team. Bob Perry is second from the left.)